Report shows Quebec seniors have less debt, but battling bills

Quebec's seniors have less debt to pay off than seniors in other parts of Canada, a new report shows.

It also shows, however, that seniors are increasingly falling behind on paying their bills.

Comparing the last three months of 2018 to 2017, seven per cent more seniors were late paying their bills.

Equifax blames slowly rising interest rates.

Bill Johnston of Equifax told CTV Montreal, "Given that a lot of people have these home equity lines and lines of credit in general, which have variable rates over time, it just sort of starts to add up."

"Right now what we're seeing is that a lot of people that are retiring do not have sufficient income to keep up the lifestyle that they had," Insolvency trustee Chantal Gingras told CTV Montreal. "So right now they're either using credit to supplement their income or they're re-mortgaging their houses in order to make ends meet at the end of the month."

The average Quebec seniors owes credit cards more than $12,000. That's close to $4,000 less than seniors in other parts of Canada.

It looks as though taxi drivers are considering taking to the streets to protest the CAQ's taxi reforms which they say give too much leeway to services like Uber, and which are essentially killing their industry.